Household pets, such as dogs and cats, tend to shed hair, which collects on carpets, furniture, and other areas of the home. A common complaint of pet owners is the seemingly never-ending battle to remove the pet hair. Pet hair and other similar debris can be relatively small and difficult to collect, even with conventional vacuum cleaners. Further, vacuum cleaners having rotating or otherwise moving agitators in the suction path to remove pet hair and other debris can collect hair and debris at the moving parts, thereby impeding the operation and effectiveness of the vacuum cleaner.
With a conventional agitator having a plurality of bristle tufts, hair tends to become wedged tightly between bristles in a conventional tufted bundle of bristles. The bundle of bristles in a tuft typically flare outwardly from the base of the tuft where the bristles are inserted into a dowel, to the outer trim diameter where the bristles spread out to some extent and are not packed as tightly together as they are at the base of the tuft. When a conventional tufted brush rotates, the outer portion of the tuft can contact hair on carpet fibers and the hair can become embedded between adjacent bristles. As the agitator rotates, the hair can be pulled toward the base of the tuft where adjacent bristles are more tightly packed together and ultimately wedged into the base of the tuft. As a result, the wedged hair is more difficult it is to remove from the tuft.